end up painted on the road, red and chrome, the broken glass sparkling
by stolethekey
Summary: Three billion people. Not back, yet, but she's giving them a chance. A chance they otherwise wouldn't have. The work she's done the past twenty years, the pain she's gone through, was all for something like this. Incremental bits of progress, baby steps toward righting the world. All of that was important, but it all fades in the face of this, today.
1. the sky turned red and swollen

**Notes:**

I wrote the bulk of the first part before endgame came out, thinking I was preparing for steve's death. i…don't even know what to say

these two parts aren't strictly related, but they're both Natasha-centric, and I didn't want to have a ton of one-shots floating around, so. all aboard the pain train

please come cry with me on tumblr stolethekey

He finds her downstairs.

The rest of the facility is as eerily quiet as it has been the past five years, filled with the same dull despair that has filled everyone's thoughts since that ill-fated day in Wakanda. The light of the moon filters gently through the windows, casting a dim glow on the dormant computers and monitors that were once whirring with life, in use by hundreds of people all united in the pursuit of a common goal.

Steve has no idea how many of them are left.

He can see a sliver of bright yellow light through the door leading to the gym, so he pushes through it, and even though he knows exactly what he's going to find, the sight on the other side sends a slight pang of concern through his body.

Natasha is facing away from him, pummeling the punching bag in the middle of the floor with a force and ferocity that would make an unknowing bystander think it had been one of her worst enemies in an earlier life. The thuds each time her fists connect with the slightly-worn leather are punctuated by hisses of breath, and Steve notes with a twinge of dismay that her hands are not gloved.

"Natasha," he says, but she appears not to hear him; she lands another combination on the bag with a lethal precision and speed as he shakes his head slightly.

"_Natasha," _he says again, louder this time, and she spins wildly, the intense and terrifying focus in her eyes dissipating slowly at the sight of him.

"Hey," she says, almost meekly, letting her arms fall to her sides. "I'm pretty much done, anyway."

He raises an eyebrow as he walks toward her, eyeing the two gloves that lay abandoned on the floor behind her. "Oh, I don't need a turn. I woke up and you weren't there, so I thought I'd come find you."

"Sorry," she mutters, fingers toying at the edge of her tank top. "Couldn't sleep."

"I figured."

She gives him a slight smile and turns to walk to the benches near the wall, picking up her gloves and letting them dangle from her fingers as she goes. He follows her, sitting down beside her as she starts to unwrap her hands.

He lets out a hiss of surprise as the wrap comes off her right hand and he catches a sight of raw, pink flesh where the skin has been rubbed clean off her knuckles.

"It's nothing," she says hastily, shoving her hand out of sight. "I've had much worse."

He grabs her left hand, only to see the same ghastly sight, and his jaw clenches as he undoes the wrap as gently as possible. "Natasha—"

"It's okay, really, it heals quickly—"

"You could also just wear the gloves. That's what they're for, you know."

"Actually, they're for support—"

"Okay, but incidentally, they also prevent skinning. And given what your hands have been through, one round on the bag wouldn't do that. Which means you're consistently ditching the gloves when you should be wearing them."

"I don't want them," she mutters, taking the wrap from his hands. "I want to feel it."

His brow furrows slightly, and she lowers her eyes to her hands, slowly rolling the wrap into a tight spiral. "I like the physical pain that comes with it. It's a distraction from everything else, but it also—it makes me feel like I'm doing something. Like I'm not just sitting here, waiting."

"We go tomorrow." He reaches for her hand and she looks up, her eyes a green ocean of stormy anguish and dangerous determination. "And you should be as prepared as possible. Which means not ripping the skin off your hands."

She sighs, her head dropping back down as her elbows land on her knees. "We can't fail."

"I know."

Her eyes shut briefly before she whispers her next words. "But what if we do?"

It's a question that rises unbidden in his mind every night as he falls into bed, but hearing the words out loud makes the possibility seem much more real.

He stays silent for a while, his fingers brushing lightly against hers, and when he speaks his voice is slightly hoarse. "If we lose—if none of this is enough—we have to at least do it with the knowledge that we didn't hold anything back. That we threw everything we had at this, and there was nothing more we could've done. I don't think I could live with myself otherwise."

She digs her heel into the ground with such force Steve is surprised she doesn't actually make a small hole in the mat, but when she speaks her voice is soft. "What we're doing, playing with time—there is a very real chance neither of us will live through this anyway."

"I know," he says quietly, terribly aware that this is the first time they've had this conversation, as overdue as it is. "There has always been that chance."

"Yeah, but it's much higher this time—"

"I know," he says again, and she meets his eyes this time, her hand tense and unmoving in his. "But that's always been the nature of what we do. The best we can do is make sure the world is still here when we're not."

He pauses. "The sun will rise, even if we don't. We just have to make sure it's rising on the world we want to see."

She flexes her fingers and winces slightly, but his concern about her pain is buried as soon as she whispers her next words. "And if it's only one of us?"

Something very sharp lodges in his heart, and the compass in his pocket seems to weigh a little heavier. "Then we just keep going," he says quietly, unable to tear his eyes from hers. "We have to. To maintain everything we've fought for."

The muscle in her jaw tightens.

"You once told me," he says, his voice low, "that we have what we have when we have it."

She smirks slightly, the sardonic glint in her eye duller than usual. "Are you going to tell me to listen to my own words and live in the present? Because I may not have a sandwich, but I _will_ find something else to throw at you.'"

He gives a slightly strangled laugh. "No," he says, shaking his head. "I was going to say that I didn't fully appreciate what I had, back then. I didn't see that you were there until you were gone."

The faint, lingering trace of amusement evaporates from her eyes.

"If this is really it—if this is the end—I want to make sure I don't take that for granted again." He tries to chuckle, the choked sound sending an involuntary shudder through his body. "That's what I was going to say before you ruined the moment."

Natasha tilts her head, her eyes somehow simultaneously soft and piercing. "You didn't trust me for a long time."

"You didn't want me to."

She snorts, her eyes shutting briefly as she shakes her head. "No, I did. I thought you did. I thought New York changed things; I thought it made me part of a team whose members trusted each other implicitly. Then I realized that you didn't, and that Nick didn't, and the deeper I got the more I realized that things were exactly the same. Everyone was still keeping me at arm's length because they thought I could turn around and double-cross them at any second."

Steve casts around for the right words to say, but she starts talking again before he finds them, her eyes trained on a spot on the floor near his shoe.

"Clint might've, but he had his family. He had a life. Had something to lose, something to fight for. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn't have anything."

She looks up again, a faint, sad smile ghosting at the corners of her lips. "You were the first one to change your mind."

His grip on her hand tightens. "I'm glad I did."

"You made me see that I had to start opening up, that being a secret was no way to live a life," she says softly. "You may make the world a better place, but you also made me a better person. You helped me _find_ my family. And I'm never going to forget that."

"For what it's worth," he says, trying to swallow the emotion rising in his throat, "Trusting you was one of the best decisions I've ever made."

She narrows her eyes. "What was better?"

"What?"

"You said 'one of the best.' What was better?"

"I'm trying to have an important conversation here—"

"Was it going with me to Vegas on New Years that one time and pretending to be my dumb hot boyfriend while I bankrupted a bunch of rich douchebags? Because that's the only thing I can think of that would be acceptable."

The tension breaks as he laughs, rolling his eyes, but when the quiet settles back into the atmosphere the mirth has faded from Natasha's eyes, replaced by a wistfulness that makes his heart sink.

He pulls her hand toward him and she complies, tucking her feet onto the bench and resting her head on his shoulder. Neither of them moves or speaks again, even as the sky outside the window gets steadily lighter.

A dazzling ray of light hits the punching bag as the sun emerges from behind the horizon, and as they both take in the faint pink and pale orange he feels Natasha shift slightly.

"This may be really cliché," she says quietly, her voice soft and comforting in the warm glow of the sunrise, "But sometimes I wonder what this is all for, whether all the pain and suffering we go through is worth it, and then I see something like this and I decide the world actually is worth saving."

"Yeah," Steve breathes, wrapping an arm around her. "It really is a beautiful place."

She hums, almost contentedly, as the sky shifts again, the gradient gradually becoming more and more blue. "I've said this before," she murmurs, "But there are definitely worse ways to go."

And as the light catches her hair, turning it the brightest mixture of red and gold he's ever seen, he finds that he's inclined to agree.

…

Time slows down as Natasha falls.

It's either that, or her brain has suddenly evolved and is processing thoughts at ten times their normal speed.

Given what she's learned the past five years, she's pretty sure either is possible.

She falls, past miles of cliff and past jagged ledges that could probably hold her weight if she would just reach out and grab one.

She doesn't.

She falls, and as the wind rips through her hair she starts counting the clouds in the sky.

One, and Thor's face flashes before her eyes, unkempt, anguished, and utterly defeated. Then, his face from five years ago—still full of pain, but also full of determination, of power, of life.

A reason for her to fight.

Two, and she sees Bruce, hears him speak about what it's like to feel like you may unravel at any moment. She feels him understand, sees him make peace with his inner monster just as she has been fighting to do.

A reason for her to try.

Three, and it's Tony, sassy and sarcastic but truly, genuinely terrified of the future and willing to do anything to ensure that it is a safe one. The first one she'd met, one who understood what it is like to owe the world a debt that may never be repaid.

A reason for her to love—not one person, but the people and the world around her.

Four, and Steve's eyes are there, piercing so deeply into her soul she feels like she's revealing her darkest secrets all over again. The one she completely and irrevocably trusts, the one somehow least like her and most like her at the same time.

A reason for her to stay.

Five, and her eyes return to Clint, his last, strangled _please_ still hovering in the air. There are tears falling freely down his face, and as her eyes rove over the aged, rough skin of his face she feels a fresh pang of pain in her chest.

The reason for her to go.

She feels lucky, almost. For it—for her—to end like this.

Lucky, that she found what she did before she had to leave.

Lucky, that she had so much to lose.

So many people wanting her dead, and yet—she is the only one who has succeeded. Walking her own path. Paving her own way. Making her own choices.

Even for the end.

It's the only way she's ever wanted to go out.

And for all the time she thought she wasn't going to get that option, for all the time her life was spiraling out of her own control—

She's gotten it back, now. Her life, and her death, fully in her grasp.

She can sense the cold, hard ground coming up underneath her, can feel the end rushing toward her. A faint, sad smile graces her lips as she takes one last look at Clint, still dangling off the cliff side, the ghost of his last scream still etched on his face.

She drinks it in, remembers it.

The upcoming darkness, and whatever comes after—that's her doing, and no one else's. She has chosen its arrival.

She closes her eyes.

Three billion people. Not back, yet, but she's giving them a chance. A chance they otherwise wouldn't have.

The work she's done the past twenty years, the pain she's gone through, was all for something like this. Incremental bits of progress, baby steps toward righting the world.

All of that was important, but it all fades in the face of this, today.

The rest of them are going to mourn her loss of freedom. They'll say that she had to do this, that she had no other options.

But she is as free as she has ever been. This is her choice.

There was a time she thought she'd never even get one.

So, this? This is nothing, but it is also somehow everything.

Her back hits the ground, and the pain that bursts through her body doesn't hurt her at all.

**End Notes:**

I have…a lot of thoughts regarding nat's death, all of which are too long and complicated to share here. maybe I'll write a long thinkpiece about her character journey and its end on tumblr later, maybe I won't. instead, I'm just gonna say that it has been a privilege growing up with her character. she was the first and only female superhero 12-year-old me had, and I saw a lot of me in her. I grew, as a woman, as a person, while natasha was doing the same; I came into my own and found my identity as I was watching her do the same onscreen. in many ways, she represents the mcu for me, but she also represents a journey that was made easier for me because I had her.

anyway. thanks for reading.


	2. there can't be songs for every soldier

They give her a funeral.

It's quick, it's quiet, and it's not nearly what she deserves, but of the five of them, not a single person seems able to string together more than a couple sentences about what Natasha meant to them. Everyone starts, stumbling through a few choked-up words, then fades into a despairing silence with a shake of their heads.

Steve thinks, somehow, that this is more fitting anyway. She'd always been content to let silence do the talking—she might've liked that their love and pain hung in the air around them, unburdened by clumsy turns of phrase and awkward word choices that could never quite capture what a person could feel.

The real emotional eruption comes after, when the silent tears are interrupted by Tony's quiet question.

"Do we know if she had family?"

_Two little gravestones by a chain-linked fence._

"Yeah," Steve answers, his voice low. "Us."

Thor grunts, and Steve knows exactly what is coming before it does—he has experienced the all-too-familiar spiral of denial Thor is about to embark on too many times. He doesn't move as the god in front of him spouts theories he knows are impossible, making plans Steve knows will never work. He doesn't flinch as Clint starts yelling about floating red things, and as his voice gets louder and angrier the pit inside of him seems to eat away at more and more of his chest.

_If it was the other way around, and it was down to me to save your life—would you trust me to do it?_

"It was supposed to be me," Clint says, his voice suddenly much smaller. "She sacrificed her life for that goddamn stone. She bid her life on it."

Steve lowers his head, eyes closed in an effort to stem the tears streaming down his face. Bruce gives a terrible, heartbreaking roar, and as Steve looks up to watch the bench go flying over the lake he feels a flare of white-hot anger at the sight of the sheer stillness of the water.

How _dare_ the earth look this good when she is not here to see it? How _dare—_

"We have to make it worth it," Bruce says, and Steve stands to meet his eyes he feels an aching determination start to form in his stomach.

_Where else am I gonna get a view like this?_

"We will."

-

Clint finds him after they've all shuffled inside, a slightly sheepish look on his face.

"When we—when this is all over, and we put the stones back," he mumbles, fingers jammed inside his pockets, "I—um, I don't think I can—I just can't go back there—"

"I understand," Steve says softly, a sense of resolve settling in his gut. "I'll do it. I want to—I want to talk to her, say a real goodbye."

Clint looks up, the pain in his face a direct replica of the one currently tearing its way through Steve's heart. "She loved you, you know."

The grief writhing in Steve's stomach like a monstrous parasite starts thrashing even harder, and even though Clint's eyes are kind Steve finds it inordinately difficult to meet them. "She loved all of us."

"Yeah, but you, especially—you helped her, a lot. She told me what she told you, what you did for her. You were there for her, all those years, when I—when I wasn't."

Steve gives him a sad, knowing smile and shakes his head. "Don't beat yourself up for that."

"If I had just—we could've had more time—"

"You didn't know," Steve says resolutely. "None of us did. Trust me, if I had, things would be different right now."  
-

Vormir is _freezing._

It's the first time he has been truly alone since the Quantum realm, and as he climbs, the icy ground crunching beneath his boots, Steve feels a dull hollow start to expand inside of him. it is achingly painful and he ignores it, even as it becomes harder and harder to disregard—he does not want to be alone with it, does not want to confront the dark abyss that has appeared where Natasha once was.

She had climbed this mountain, too; she might have even taken this path, his feet could be landing where hers did, minutes earlier.

They'd climbed a similar one, on Earth, back before the snap, before the world seemed so irreparably full of despair, and she'd joked about going rock climbing sometime, to see which of them could scale a wall faster. They had never gone—and now he would never know—

He thinks he might be hallucinating, because every now and then he thinks he can see her, shivering but still excited, cracking jokes and smiles with her old friend, completely unaware of the terrible bargain awaiting her at the top.

The cliff comes slowly into view, the top surrounded by swirling clouds and what looks like smoke, and as he stares at the sky Steve sends a brief prayer of thanks to his past self for leaving the soul stone for the end. Ice and snow coat every inch of the ground, and the temperature seems to drop with every step he takes.

The suitcase in his hand seems to grow heavier as he approaches the top, and his grief is briefly replaced by unease as a black, shadowy figure begins to form in front of him.

"Steven Rogers", the figure says, his voice sending a burst of adrenaline through Steve's veins, "Son of—"

"You," Steve snarls, fingers curling into a fist.

"Me," Red Skull says calmly, floating forward so that his face, as grotesque as ever, is brought into the dim light of the sky. "Welcome—"

"I killed you."

"You _thought_ you killed me, just as you _thought _you killed HYDRA. But I am not dead; instead, I have been assigned to a fate far less desirable—"

"Save it," Steve says roughly, ignoring the pounding in his chest. "Where is she?"

"I'm afraid you are too late," the Skull says softly. "Your friends have already gone."

The double meaning of the word is not lost on him.

"I know," he says, trying to ignore the fresh grief that has just jolted through his body. "I'm from the future. I'm here to return the stone. And to take her back. A soul for a soul, right? That was the deal."

"There is nothing that can be done. Surely Barton told you? It is irreversible."

And he knows, he _knows_, he has known since Clint's knees buckled in front of his eyes, but there is something in him that keeps him fighting even though he knows it is futile.

"Then take me. Take me instead—"

"It will not. What's done is done. You may keep the stone—"

"I don't _want_ the stone, I want _her_._"_

The man that was once Johann Schmidt merely looks at him, an almost detached look on his face. "Is this love, Captain Rogers?"

Steve laughs, a bitter, hollow sound that rings through the nothingness around them. "_Love. _Nothing more than an empty, meaningless word when you're too late."

"But you knew you were going to be too late," Red Skull says quietly. "And you came anyway."

"Yeah," Steve says, voice cracking slightly. "I wanted to make things right, as much as I can. She spent her whole life thinking she was alone. I'm not gonna let her die that way, too."

There is a moment of silence before Red Skull speaks. "For what it's worth," he almost murmurs, "She did not die alone. Her friend—Barton—"

"I know," Steve mutters, ignoring the pang in his heart as Clint's grief-stricken face swims into his mind. "But I wanted to be here too. I couldn't—if she's really gone— "

"What an honorable thing to do."

"Listen," Steve snarls, frustration seeping into his voice. "She was my anchor to this life, my guide through the labyrinth of moral ambiguity that is the present. I owe her this, at least."

"The man out of time," Red Skull says softly. "Yet somehow always cursed with too much."

"_You_ did that," Steve spits, his nails digging deeper and deeper into his palm. "I lost _everything_ because of you. Everything. She showed me there was a purpose. That there's a reason to keep fighting. She gave me back my life. The least I can do is try and do the same for her."

"There is nothing you can do," Red Skull says simply, seemingly unaware of Steve's mounting anger. "The stone—"

Something snaps. "I—DON'T—CARE—ABOUT—THE—STONE!" he roars, slamming the case onto the ground. The latch breaks open, and the orange gleam of light that beams into the air sends another jolt of fury through Steve's body.

"Take the stone," he snarls, both hands clenched tightly at his sides. "Take it, and keep it for the next sick person who wants it for some _revolting_, _demented_ purpose—I never want to see it again."

He stops, breathing heavily, and Red Skull holds his gaze steadily, a calm and indifferent look on his face.

Steve's voice is cold and eerily calm when he speaks again. "I want her body."

"I'm afraid that's impossible."

"It's down there. I can get it—"

"No," he says softly, a strange glittering in his eyes. "You may talk to it, pay your respects. But you cannot take it. It must stay here, as a reminder of the sacrifice made for the stone."

"Fine," Steve growls, as another surge of anger washes over him. "I'm going."

"It's a long way down."

"I'll walk."

The trek down the mountain is more painful, somehow, than the one up it. The cold silence, broken occasionally by a sharp gust of wind, becomes more unbearable with every step. He climbs downward, jaw clenched against the wind, and wonders briefly where the Skull lives when he isn't greeting people on the way to their death.

The trek down the mountain seems endless, but as Steve's feet hit solid ground and he sees the body crumpled at the foot of the cliff, it seems to come to an end much too quickly.

He approaches the body as if in slow motion, hardly daring to breathe, and as he catches a sight of achingly familiar red hair a sob starts to make its way out of his chest.

His knees buckle as he reaches her side and sees her face. Her eyes are closed—he wonders if she'd done that on purpose—and her expression is so calm that if he didn't know better he'd think she was simply pretending to sleep, ready to leap up and scare him at any moment.

Natasha, once so strong and full of life, is lying limp and broken in front of him, and despite himself he feels a wave of futile denial crash through his body.

_See you in a minute_, she'd said, her eyes dancing with excitement, so giddy that she'd hardly been able to stand still in her suit.

_See you in a minute,_ she'd said, her face full of the first glimpse of genuine happiness he'd seen from her in over five years. She'd been so joyful, so relieved to have gotten her family back, so excited to be saving the world with them again.

_See you in a minute,_ she'd said, and then she'd gone—

He wonders what her last words were.

"Hey," he murmurs, taking her cold, limp hand. Something hot starts to prickle behind his eyes. "You know, when I told you to get a life, this was not what I meant."

"I just—we just wanted to tell you: we did it. We won. Because of you."

She doesn't respond, and the silence gets more unbearable every second, so he starts talking. He tells her about the funeral, about the way Bruce threw a bench into the sky, and then he keeps going—his voice breaks every few sentences, but he tells her about Bruce's snap, about the final, big, battle, about everyone coming back just in the nick of time, like they always do—

He falters slightly when he gets to Tony.

"I never—I didn't realize until after—I never really apologized to him. We just kind of moved on. I guess I thought, if we actually won, we'd have the rest of our lives to fix things."

His eyes shut, ever so briefly.

"I keep thinking about that, too. How I never say things until none of it means anything anymore. How little words mean when you're too late."

He sighs, trailing a finger along her cold, stiff palm. "Grief and regret. They're like old enemies to me, now. I'm no stranger to them. But it still hurts, every single time."

"I suppose, objectively, that the cost we pay is nothing compared to what we get. But I look at the world we saved, the world we brought back, and I just—I don't know if I have a place in it, anymore. It feels different without you."

Ice crystals are starting for form on her hair, and Steve runs a hand down a few strands, wiping them clean as much as he can.

"For you, it hasn't been that long since you—since you fell. But for me, it's been days, and I really—I just really, really miss you. You worked so hard to make me see that I belong in that world, but—I don't know, Nat, I think I always just belonged with you."

"So I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I wish you were here to tell me."

Her skin looks _so _pale in the shadow of the cliff.

"Anyway, I know you can't hear me. And if you could, you'd probably chew me out for walking a million miles in the snow just to talk to someone who can't respond. But I guess I just—I didn't want you to be alone."

Her hand is freezing and unmoving in his, and his voice, hoarse and full of tears, fades away as his eyes rove over her pale, lifeless face. He lets the silence sit with them for what feels like hours, only moving when he feels his body start to go numb from the cold.

He buries her, there in the cold, his fingers scraping at the icy dirt in a sort of numb desperation. He finds a sharp rock to use as a spade and starts digging. The wind, unforgivingly harsh, bites at his skin as he works, but he hardly feels it at all—he digs with a kind of cold fury, deeper and deeper into the cold, hard earth. He funnels his grief into work, just as he always has; he welcomes the sharp, physical pain of the cuts that form on his hands and lets it wash over the ache in his heart.

In that way, he thinks, they have always been similar.

In this world, time is of no consequence, and he is completely unaware of the amount of it that passes. He sinks deeper and deeper into the hole, fingers raw but always working, and when it finally seems deep enough he looks up to find that the sky looks exactly the same.

He lifts his companion, his guiding light, as gently as possible and lowers her into the grave, arranging her limbs so that she appears to be sleeping. As he straightens up, he remembers Tony's funeral—the beauty of the lake and the sky, and the rows and rows of people, of families, all there to pay their respects.

And here she lies, in a rough, hand-dug hole in the ground on a completely foreign planet.

He covers her in the earth, eyes never leaving her body, and after she is completely obscured from view he reaches into his pocket.

The makeshift gravestone expands in his hand, whirring softly, and he leans over to tuck it into the earth near her head. He doesn't understand the technology, but Bruce had said that it would find roots in the ground, that it would work its way into the planet and stay there. A semblance of permanence, an eternal monument for the one who had given everything for the _chance _to make the world right again.

He glances at the stone, which is still buzzing steadily, and runs a final hand along the dirt beside it.

"Bye, Nat," he murmurs softly as he gets to his feet. "We miss you, and we—I—love you."

Long after Steve has disappeared back into the night, the humming stops. A completed marker stands, small but erect, at the head of a makeshift grave at the bottom of the cliff. It will stand there for the rest of eternity, for nobody and for everybody. On the surface of the stone, a hand-written conscription has taken form, carved painstakingly by a multitude of different hands.

Here lies Natasha Romanoff,

One who would give everything and ask for nothing in return.

May the world remember her for who she was:

A spy, a hero, a friend.

A loved one.


End file.
